random reflections

Happy Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving project from my time in Sandy's classroom. One of my many blessings is the time I spend in this classroom each week.

Truly there is not a day when I am not consciously grateful for all I have. Stacy Julian posted a list she wrote yesterday on her blog, and I took a few minutes to quickly brainstorm some of my many blessings:

family·a lasting marriage with my best friend·friends·time to think·love·good health·retirement·faith·comfortable home·time to create·good (cheap) wine·gym membership·cell phone·Subaru Forester·my own craft space·Sandy’s classroom·Starbuck’s coffee·Wegmans·hot water·warm house·having options·happy, productive children·internet classes and friendships·opportunities to learn·time to write·a beautiful neighborhood·walks in the park·MacBook·iPod Touch·cameras·books·travel·good food·time with family·holidays to celebrate

Enjoy your day!

Design Your Life: Week 8

This week's focus was a continuation of Emphasis and Contrast. Since we had received an enlargement alert from Cathy ahead of time, the photos were already to go. This layouts came together a lot quicker this week, with the exception of the Real World Color which I frequently find challenging. Here are Week 8's layouts:

Design Your Life: Weeks 6 & 7

Tomorrow we'll receive Week 8's lesson and assignments. I thought I ought to get my Week 6 (Design Principle: Unity) and Week 7 (Design Principle: Emphasis) uploaded. Finding photos that work well with the templates we receive, tell a story I want to tell, and are decent enough to scrap is getting harder. It's certainly not that I don't have hundreds of photos to scrap, but many are in piles for theme albums (Disney, birthdays, a family Christmas album--over multiple years, trips), and many are old 3X5 photos. And, truthfully, a lot of our old photos are simply not very good. With both kids living away from home, there aren't a lot of photo events happening any more. Once I finally find the photos, though, I'm generally pretty happy with the layouts. So here they are.

Week 6:

Another layout that was 90% digital, thanks to a lovely woman in class who provides templates for all of Cathy's designs.

This was fun, and prompted by Stacy Julian's Photo Freedom book where she encourages you to scrap photos from a variety of years.

The Real World Color assignment.

Week 7:

I love these photos from last year's trip to the tree farm, so I was happy to do another layout. I had previously done a one page layout, but it is quite different.

 

These photos were taken LONG before I even knew about scrapbooking, but it's a story I don't want to forget.

The Real World Color assignment, which I almost didn't do, but I'm glad I did.

Stories in Hand

I signed up for Jessica Sprague's free course "Stories in Hand" a little reluctantly since Cathy Z's Design course is pretty time-consuming. But I knew all Jessica's videos are available to you forever once you're enrolled so I went ahead. I'm certainly glad I did, and I've been able to keep up with both classes. Jessica's class is all about collecting--collecting the stories of your past and your present. She provided digital papers, tabs, titles, and over 1,000 journaling prompts to download and print. Here's the finished binder and a little notebook to record current stories as they happen:

This week we've been looking through the prompts and making checklists of stories we remember as we read the prompts. I've been amazed at all I've remembered! Compared to most of my friends I have always felt my memory of growing up has been pretty poor. Reading through these prompts and talking about them with Tracy has created three pages of possible story topics.

I've typed up two of the stories on Google Docs.com. That's another benefit of Jessica's classes--I always learn about some new website or technological trick I didn't know about before. It's already been a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to doing more of this on my own once the class is over at the end of the week.

Design Your Life: Week 5

Cathy's class is half over, and I already know I'm going to miss it. This week's focus was White Space, and here are my layouts.

I managed to do the whole photo square in PSE 6.0. I think about doing this a lot, but rarely does it work out so well. And so quickly.

Cathy suggested using this format every month. I once started a monthly scrapbook recap. I think I did six or seven months, but didn't keep it up. This would be much easier to do.

Yes, it was.

It felt historic.  And it was.

(Photo from the Obama website.)

VOTE!

I have voted in every presidential election since I was old enough to vote, but today felt different. It felt historic. We were at our polling place at 6:25 am along with two of our neighbors. We were driving out of the polling place at 6:35 am, so no wait for us. Go vote, even if you have to wait. I do believe every vote makes a difference. Especially this year.